Genesis 18:16-19:38, Matthew 6:25-7:14, Psalms 8:1-9, Proverbs 2:6-15
Today is the 8th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a delight to be here with you today as we approach the close of the first full week of our brand-new sparkly new year. And we are getting off to quiet a beautiful start to this new year and the Bible is speaking loud and clear as we move forward and it’s just gonna keep getting better, even when it gets more challenging, even when we’re facing challenges, even when the Bible is confronting some of the things that are…that need to be shifted, that need to be transformed. It’s a beautiful thing. For example, we listened to Jesus telling us that forgiveness is the way forward basically yesterday because forgiveness…forgiveness ultimately sets us free. And that is a beautiful thing. So, gratitude to you what the Bible is speaking to us already and gratitude for the way this year’s beginning. So, let’s dive in. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Genesis chapter 18 verse 16 through 19 verse 38.
Commentary:
Okay. We need to talk about both what we read in the Old Testament and in the New Testament today. Again, you know, like yesterday Jesus said something very profound that explains a lot of things about life itself. And, so, we need to touch on that. But first we need to look at the story that we read in the book of Genesis because this is the first time that we come to a place in the story in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament and go, “what is going on here? Exactly what is happening here?” Because this is a strange kind of messed up story, this story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
So, we know that at first God came to Abraham and there was a meal and there was a discussion and God revealed his heart to Abraham, right out of the gate by…by showing Abraham essentially, if there are righteous people down there then I won’t destroy the place. But all that I’m hearing is that the wickedness is off the charts. So, I’m gonna go have a look. So, that’s when Abraham’s like, “so if 50 people, You surely wouldn’t for 50, right? Surely you wouldn’t for 40, surely all the way down to 10.” And basically, what God is saying is, “that’s not…that’s not what’s going on here. Like I didn’t come down here just because I just was in the mood to destroy people today and…and things that they had made and cities and stuff.” The wickedness, the trajectory…and we…we got to listen to this because we’re gonna hear this so often through the prophets…the trajectory is only evil. This can’t go on. The path is only evil. And, so, God goes down to verify this and, in the process, gets Lot out of the city, which it would seem that that would be Abraham’s chief concern, the concern for his own family. Probably he doesn’t know a bunch of other people down in Sodom and Gomorrah. So, God gets Lot out of the city. They are running for their lives. His wife, Lot’s wife turns back, and is turned into a pillar of salt. This is a very famous passage of Scripture. But if we just pause there for a second, take a step back, look behind the story, what are we seeing? When we are moving directly and intentionally away from what is evil, things that we may have participated in, things that we may have just been associated with, but when we discover this is only evil, I have to get out of here right now then don’t ever look back again. That path leads to only evil and only destruction. But the story does go on. They flee to Zoar. Now, there is just the father, Lot and his two daughters because the mom…the mother is gone. How shocking would that be? And then they can’t live in Zoar so they flee to the mountains and the next scene we see them in a cave, they’re living in a cave, they’re hiding in a cave. And you just imagine the grief and the shock of it all. Their mom is gone. All they are…they have is their father. Their father is a foreigner in a foreign land. Everything that he had, any…we remember this from just a little earlier in Genesis…Abraham and Lot had to part company because they were basically too rich to be together. They had too much to be together. And, so, they had to part company. So, Lot parted from Abraham rich. Now he’s hiding in a cave with his two daughters. Everything is lost. All is destroyed. There is no one to protect them. And the irony in the story is that at no time did any of them think we should go back to Abraham, like we should go back and find Abraham. There hiding in this cave with nothing and no one and this is the part of the story the gets really, really, you know, kind of complicated and hard to process because the daughters decide that the best move is…is to get their father drunk and to have sex with their father and see if they can’t get pregnant to continue the father’s family line. Yeah, that's…you go, “why is that in the Bible? Like what is going on here? That’s such a troubling scene.” But if we try to put ourselves contextually several many thousands of years ago in a very tribal time then we would understand that the daughters really did have a bleak outlook. This is a very patriarchal time. They are foreign girls. Their father is now destroyed. All of the wealth and possessions and status destroyed. The only person that could claim them, the only person that could protect them would be to continue that family line and have a son, a son that could one day speak and protect them, otherwise Lot’s getting older and they can stay with their father, but once their father passes away…and now things are pretty precarious because they don’t have any protection…then there’s really no good options. I mean, they can try to flee back to their homeland, but they are well over a thousand miles from their homeland on foot no cars no highways no planes and somewhere along the way they may be taken. And the prospects at that point would be dire. So, we can read a story like this and because it’s found in the pages of the Bible, then we can subtly take our hearts into a place that seems as if God condones or wanted this to happen because this is in the Bible, that He approved of this, that this was the desire. That is not the case. And every time you come…every time we come to a story that we consider troubling we have to…the first thing we need to do is ask ourselves where our hearts are toward God. Does this turn us sideways? Because when we look at this story God had revealed His heart to Abraham that He had no intention of destroying any righteous people at all. As it turned out there was no righteous people down there. For the sake of Abraham Lot and his kids and his wife were sent out of the city to be spared. But in the end, they didn’t turn to God and they didn’t run back to Abraham. They ran to the mountains in a cave. They analyzed the situation in their own strength and made a judgment call, a very difficult one, and proceeded with a plan that they made for themselves. And as it turns out the girls had boys. So, their plan essentially worked, and the Moabites and the Ammonites were created. But is this how God wanted it to go down? God would’ve liked to find righteous people in the valley. The reason that He was going to check it out in the first place that was that He heard there was only wickedness. That is about the entirety of the involvement. There were no instructions about daughters and fathers getting together to create offspring. These were not things intended or compounded or instructed by God. They were choices that people made without running toward God. And we will see plenty of that. But could we step back and just look at our own lives? Because we have made plenty of pivotal choices in our lives without God, and those choices grew up to be things that mattered in our lives. And we carry some of that around with us today. The story indeed is a disruptive story. But when we look at our own stories, our own lives, we see plenty of disruptive decisions that we’ve made. So, the point of this is that we will encounter stories in the Bible, and we will encounter stories in life that we scratch our head and go like, “how did you arrive at that decision” or scratch our head and wonder, “how it all worked out to be this way so horrible.” But when we start backtracking at the systematic choices that were made to arrive at that conclusion then we realize we’re doing the same thing. We’re just wearing different clothes and we have different customs, but the heart, the motivator, the reason becomes the same. And we can’t blame God for what we do. That’s not fair. He’s given us a will and we can choose to fear the Lord and become wise and walk with Him on the narrow path that leads to life, that Jesus was talking about that few ever find. We can by will make the choice that is the desire of our hearts or we can do what we do and make our choices and follow the paths that those choices lead to. But we can’t blame God when we get there and it’s not what we wanted. And in so many ways this is the heart of this particular story that we are reading right now in the Old Testament.
But then we get into the New Testament into the book of Matthew and we sit down at the feet of Jesus again as we’re going to the Gospels and treasuring our time with Him. And yesterday He said that if we were not willing to forgive then we would not be forgiven. And that needs to be continually processed. And He said today…and…and buckle up for this because it is equally as disruptive as yesterday, “do not judge so that you won’t be judged for you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use.” Yeah, can that sink in for a second? We all have some type of awareness that at some point we will stand before God and account for our lives. And we consider that to be judgment, the time of judgment, that we will stand before God. And some of us are completely fine with that because God’s grace will cover a multitude of sins and when we move into it that way. Some of us are terrified that just…well…I mean…gosh how…how do you even think about standing before the Almighty God and answering for yourself? What Jesus is saying is, “you get to set the standard. Like, you get to pick the way you will be judged on that day. You will be judged the way you judged others.” Oh, my goodness…because we are such a judgmental people that we better…we better latch onto this and understand the way of God’s kingdom is grace, is forgiveness, is merc. We don’t have to judge or shame people into becoming what we need them to represent in our lives. We don’t need this kind of control over each other. We have plenty to pay attention to inside of our own hearts and minds. We’re setting the standard here. Let me just read it again. This is Jesus talking. “You will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use.” That’s pretty stark. It’s pretty clear and we better pay attention. And again, it’s not because God is laying down all these rules we cannot possibly abide by because that’s what He wants to do is to set us up to fail every day so that all we ever feel spiritually is a failure. That is not the goal. Freedom the goal, that we would be set free from the world, that we would be set free to be who we were created to be. And, so, we have to understand that forgiveness flows through God’s kingdom and we indeed can be judgmental, if that’s what we want, but we are setting the standard for our own judgment.
Prayer:
Jesus, we invite Your Holy Spirit into that. These are stark things, really foundational things because the idea of forgiveness or the idea of making a judgment, especially a negative judgment when things are not going our way, this is every day. This is an everyday…You are speaking about things that we deal with every single day of our lives. And, so, we are at the beginning of the year and we are starting to practice what You are instructing so that we might become like You, Christ like in the way that we live in this world. And, so, come Holy Spirit, again help us to live in forgiveness, quick rapid forgiveness before things have festered and become bitterness and poison to us. And Father, this judgmentalism that we carry around we’re just have…we have something to say about everything. This kind comes from those places of bitterness. We’re not able to look at other people as created in the image of God. Every time that we go to those dark places and just judge we are judging what is created in Your image. We are judging somebody else’s story, a story, a life that we aren’t living, that isn’t ours, that isn’t our story to tell. Help us to focus on the story that we are telling because this is the story of the adventure of life with us and You. Come Holy Spirit and help us to live that way, that we are in the adventure of a life with You, and that everything that we do is in collaboration with You that we get to be the salt of the earth, that we get to be the light of the world, that we have the opportunity to love one another as we love ourselves. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
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Community Prayer and Praise:
Good morning DAB family this is Linda from Alberta Canada calling. I have not called in in six months or so I would say or maybe it’s been a year. I just wanted to wish everybody a happy new year and to just touch base and to say that we’re all doing fine. And I realized today that I have been listening since June of 2015. So, that’s quite some time now and I was remembering when I first called in how broken I was. Actually, when I first started listening and my daughter was having many many challenges of different types and so many of you pray for her and I just wanted to say thank you to everybody and I really really appreciate it. She still lives in another city. Some of you may recall that she moved away for basically our safety. And she’s doing exceptionally well and she’s having a fantastic life and the Lord has turned so much of her ashes I’ll say into beauty. I wanted to leave this verse for anyone who’s struggling today, and it was one that’s ministered to me quite a bit and it is this, he has showed you o man what is good and what does the Lord require of you to act justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8. Have a lovely day everyone. Bye now.
Good morning DAB family this is Stephen from Alabama January 4th 21. Happy new year and if you’re new here welcome to the journey. I’m on my 10th year. One thing I could tell you to describe this ministry, once you hang around here for a little while I would tell you it’s excellent. Everything they do, everything that we put out, the way they continue to improve this app and the products they have are always excellent. Now some of the products that I have used, and this may lend me to call about this this morning, God of Your Story, excellent, Brian’s other books, excellent the music Heart, the Christmas album, all those things they’re just excellent. One thing I used this morning that we’ve been using is we have…have had a rodent issue. This time of the year, wintertime they start coming inside. So, we have one apparently that took some of our mouse, you know, rat killer and has died in a wall. And if you’ve ever had that you know what that smells like, right? It’s not good enough and it lasts for a long time. So, right in our bathroom when you go in there, especially when the doors been closed for a while it’s awful. So, I have been using the Global Campfire candle and burning it in there and it just almost immediately takes away the odor. It’s such a great smell. God of Your Story, excellent books. All the of the book…books are excellent as well. And one of my favorite things is when you do in order from them you get these little cards, these little giveaway cards and I use that as one of my main evang…ways of evangelizing to people to share the Daily Audio Bible card.
Hello, hello Brian, hello brothers hello sisters my name is Gavin I’m from Indiana. I have just heard a message from one of my sisters in Arizona and I wrote down a few verse…a few…not verses…excuse me…I wrote down just a couple of quotes that she mentioned. She says, “just because I’m having a bad day does not mean I’m having a bad life.” Ongoing. “I’m just scared, overwhelmed. And I’m just tired.” And then she says, “thank you in advance for your prayers.” My thing I want to say today is I just want to encourage any other brother and sisters who are having these moments where they’re in a hole, where they can’t see the light. And I pray fervently that they would lift their eyes to God. It’s not that God can’t see you it’s that you might not just be looking for God. Don’t let that come as a burden or like an attack. Let that come as encouragement to seek God throughout the day. I thank you God. I thank you Brian for providing us with this daily. Thank you for being faithful. This is my first time calling and I just really lift up any other brothers and sisters along with my sister in Arizona and May she feel well. Thanks guys and have a beautiful day. God bless you. In Jesus’ name.
My name is Whitney and I’m calling from Florida I and I’m here with my three kids their names are Finley, Levin, and little Wenna. I started listening to daily audio Bible a few months ago and it’s been amazing and a huge just awesome thing for my life and I wanted to share that with my kids. And, so, they started listening to Ezekiel 4 days ago and we’re living it, right guys? Yeah. Yeah. It’s so special to be able to sit around the dinner table or lunch table and listen to God’s word with them. So, we just wanted to thank Brian and Jill and Ezekiel for everything they do. And we have a really special prayer request for our daddy. His name is Russell. What did we want to pray for our daddy for, that He, that God goes in daddy’s heart. Yes. We want to pray for daddy…for…his name is Russell…that he accepts Jesus into his heart. Thank you, Daily Audio Bible.
Hi, my name is Scott Owens I need prayer for my wife and my kids. Our family right now I’ve been away from my family for three months because of work. I’ve been trying to say money for a __ so my wife and daughter can join me. My sons are 18 __ on their own. But since I’ve been gone my wife’s only been to church one time and my kids go sporadically. It’s a real struggle to keep my family together. I know that God opened the door for this job and He’s the one that directed me to do this. I’ve been praying for healing for my marriage for over 12 years. I’m asking the Lord to do a new thing to put a new love in my wife’s heart for me and a new passion but first and foremost a desire to love to love the Lord and to serve him with all our heart. Also, to teach me to love her with His love and for her to love me with His love. Thank you everybody for your prayers that you’re gonna be giving and I’ll continue to pray as I listen to the prayer requests as well. Thank you.
Philippians 4:6 says do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And, so, father I come this morning reaching out Lord to…to those so many Lord that have lost loved ones to this virus Lord to some that are in the hospital father that just need a healing touch from you Lord. You are Jehovah Raffa, the God that heals. And, so, father I ask that you touch them this morning. Give them comfort, give them peace Lord but most of all heal their bodies, heal the ones who are…that are just waiting for a new life and just waiting Lord that for you to just touch them. And I ask this Father that You would just reach out and touch everyone that’s listening this morning, that they can hear this…my word speaking for them who are in the hospitals Lord or at home with this virus. I just pray that You would just move in a mighty way and that a vaccine would come sooner for the ones that are still waiting for it Father and more vaccine would come and so the ones that are in the hospital will be healed and they would be able to get the vaccine. But I pray that they would just have confident peace during this time. It’s in Your son holy and precious name Lord I ask this prayer. Thank You, Lord. We love You and we need to right now today we need You. It’s in Jesus mighty name I pray. Amen.